When left uncontrolled, diabetes mellitus, or simply diabetes, results in hyperglycemia, or high blood sugar. Over time, hyperglycemia leads to serious damage to many of the body's systems, especially the nerves and blood vessels. There are multiple variants of diabetes. In Type 1 diabetes, the pancreas produces little to no insulin. Treatment for Type 1 diabetics requires insulin injections. In the most common type of diabetes, Type 2 diabetes, the pancreas does not produce a sufficient amount of insulin, or the insulin produced is less effective due to cellular resistance, or both. The World Health Organization provides that Type 2 represents 90% of the cases of diabetes worldwide. Treatment for Type 2 diabetes includes healthy eating and physical activity, as well as medications and insulin therapy.
Complications of the chronic hyperglycemia of diabetes include endothelial damage, proliferative retinopathy, neuropathy, nephropathy, hypertension and ischemic heart disease. Diabetes is one of the leading causes of heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, blindness, and limb amputations and as such it is a drain on the economies of all industrial countries.
Often in cases of Type 2 diabetes, pharmacological intervention is necessary for treatment. There are many types of approved medications for Type 2 diabetes, such as sulfonylureas, dipeptidyl peptidase IV (DPP-IV) inhibitors, meglitinides, biguanides, thiazolidinediones, and alpha-glucosidase inhibitors. However, these drugs produce unwanted side effects, including upset stomach, hypoglycemia, weight gain, liver problems, skin rash, headache, and respiratory infection. Further, these medications are often used together as a combination therapy in order to be more effective. However, the use of multiple pharmaceuticals increases the likelihood of unwanted side effects. Nearly 50% of Type 2 diabetic patients eventually require administration of insulin.
Insulin administration remains to be the only treatment option for Type 1 diabetes. Furthermore, the treatment of Type I diabetes by insulin cannot avoid the long-term complications induced by daily cycles of hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia, due to the difficulty of determining the exact insulin dosage required in changing physiological conditions.
Hypertension, high cholesterol and hyperglycemia are often present in individuals with both types of diabetes, particularly Type 2 diabetes. The combination of hypertension, high cholesterol and diabetes significantly increases the risk of a heart attack or stroke. Presently, the drugs used to treat these three conditions, (hypertension, high cholesterol and diabetes), have side effects to varying degrees. It would therefore be useful to have a therapeutic composition which lowers blood glucose also modulates blood pressure and cholesterol, without side effects seen in the presently available drugs. Such a composition would have utility in the treatment of hypertension, cholesterol, along with diabetes.